Heartstrings
by fowl68
Summary: She is made of heart-wishes and memories, of everything that makes up mortals and she is not one of them. SummonSpirit!Martel. Post-game. Possible Spoilers.


**Disclaimer:** I don't own anything!

**Author's Note: **High school graduation in a month and some change and I'm feeling a little freaked out.

I beat Skyward Sword and I thought the game was pretty awesome, but I hate the Wii control with a passion, which means I most likely will never buy it for myself. Still working on Tales of Vesperia because I'm stuck in a stupid part that should be easy.

I'm going to see Lion King on stage this week-I'm so excited-even though it's technically a birthday present for my mom and brother.

* * *

_"It fell through eternity, across countless glaxies, solar systems and universes until it found itself entering the atmosphere of our own world."  
-Trans-Siberian Orchestra_

* * *

She's been floating around for what feels like forever and no time at all—in truth, she has no concept of time. Her only perception of it comes from the memories that she's made of, the memories and heart-wishes that drift through the air until she collects them—and she finds herself able to, faintly and only sometimes, taste the air or breathe the salty sea. Sometimes, she can even see people, and speak to them.

_(She wasn't sure if they're able to hear her. Or even see her. Some of them would look at her with pale skin and wide eyes. Others would scream and run. Most of the time, they show no reaction)_

She feels a sudden, powerful heart-wish, one that is as strong as the four most powerful inside her_(They were love and sisters and smiles and beloveds of and they've never gone away until now. Now, the sisters was missing and it left a wide, terrible, gaping hole…)._ There is another heart-wish too, one filled with an old hope, an ancient, childish hope. She goes to the heart-wishes and finds one, soaring high and quivering in some emotion—she does not understand emotions as she does not understand time for they are things of little consequence to her—but she does not go to that one.

She goes to the other one and finds nothing. Nothing in her step away from the worlds. She takes a mental step to the left and she is hovering above the world and there are eyes on her. She can feel that heart-wish there, open and vulnerable and she can do nothing but fill it for that is what she is.

She finds herself standing before a wisp of a girl who looks too smooth and too unharmed, but the eyes are empty and old, full of stale hope and repeated disappointments. She is hollow inside, no soul or spirit to fill her, so the heart-wishes do it. They slip inside and with each new heart-wish that is inside this girl, there is a change in her. A shade lighter skin, a touch narrower the eyes, a few wisps of the hair browner.

And then there is room for only one more, so she steps forward and the memories of the only person she has left inside her_ (Strong, pounding, never-ending…beloveds and friends and smiles and laughter and pain and compassion and fire…)_ guide her actions.

A brushing back of hair, a motherly embrace that she shouldn't be able to feel, and these memories—so powerful and so full of longing—overpower the others and the wisp of the girl is gone and all that is left are shades of the memories and details of heart-wishes.

The earth that she sees is broken and terrible. But something leads her walking with legs that she should not know how to work. These legs are corporeal, can feel the pressure of the air pushing down, can feel the rubble beneath her feet. Something is calling to her, something that she knows, but has forgotten.

Her feet lead her to a patch of dirt and a small plant that looks too frail to even be able to hold itself up. Her fingers brush fuzzy leaves—the sensations tingles along her new, sensitive skin and it draws something warm inside her middle—and the piece of herself in the back of her mind that she had not realized she had been missing is slotted back into place and that is when she is granted understanding.

The two that come before her are great heart-wishers. She recognizes one from Before_ (Now, there is a sense of time. Before is Before she gained understanding)_. They look at her with strange expressions, as though not sure what to make of her.

So she tells them what she knows. "I am Martel and also the incarnation of the Great Seed itself. Lloyd," She does not know how she knows this name. Perhaps there had been a heart-wish once that carried that name with this face. "Your hope, as well as the hope of many others, resurrected me."

"So you're Mithos' sister?" There is a sadness in those eyes, a terrible one. _(I just wanted a world for my sister and me…)_

She knows that name well. It is a name that is shared with those memories and heart-wishes that had sustained her for so long. _(Please, bring her back…my sister…can't live…going to do?...wife…sister…lost…tragedy…)_

"No. Mithos' sister Martel is only one of the many souls within me. I am mana and I am the Giant Tree. I am a symbol of the many lives sacrificed to the Great Seed. I am a new spirit, born to accompany the Giant Tree and now the Seed has awakened anew, along with me."

A swell of memories is summoned forth and the seedling grows and stretches and expands until it seems to block out the sun. It is little more than an illusion, she knows, but it is something that can happen, in Time.

They are awed, Lloyd in particular and there is a stirring of a heart-wish in him, one not yet understood or developed. "This is…the Giant Kharlan Tree?"

"It's so beautiful, and so grand!"

"This is the future form of the Giant Tree, but right now, it is only a small seedling. In its current state, the Tree will wither and die."

There is the sudden growth of the heart-wish that she had been waiting for, one realized. "Well then, how do we protect it?"

"You must provide the Tree with love and adoration. As long as those conditions are met, I shall always protect this seedling."

"I promise, if the Tree ever starts to wither, I'll make sure we won't let it die."

"Then, Lloyd, on behalf of all living things, I want you to give this Tree a new name as a proof of the pact. The Giant Kharlan Tree was first planted here by the elves when they arrived as a guardian to watch over and protect them. This newly reborn Tree protects the lives of elves, humans and all those caught in between. Therefore, this Tree requires a new name."

The girl beside him smiles like sunlight. "Lloyd, pick a name for us. A name for everyone's Tree."

"So this Tree…is the link that connects the world. Okay, I got it! This Tree's name is…"

* * *

Her heart-memories _(Love…wife…friend…confidant…strength…)_ resonate with one of the people that joins Lloyd and the girl. The man—Kratos, the memory says—has old eyes in a face too young for them, eyes that match Lloyd's in more than simply color. He stares at her the way some of the others Before did, with widened eyes and hands clenching in disbelief.

When she tells them her name, he closes his eyes_ (Red-tinted brown, like blood-stained dirt)_ and seems to draw something up from within himself. He stays after the others are well gone.

"She knows you," Martel says to him.

A muscle in his jaw jumps. "Who is 'she'?" He asks. His voice resonates with many heart-wishes that have been made_ (My wife and son…take them away…cold blood…)_.

"Martel Yggdrasill." The name is easy enough to find. Four voices called out that name for millennia.

An emotion flashes across that too-young face, twisting it.

"She misses you, she says."

The man looks away, eyes on the seedling._ (He's afraid that, if he looked too long, the sorrowangerlonging would overwhelm him again and that was dangerous because what was to stop him from being like beautifulbroken Mithos?)_ "There's someone else who misses her more than I."

A face flicks across memory. Mischievous eyes, a crooked smile. "When will he come?"

"I can't say. I'll tell him to come though."

She tilts her head to a side, a motion that seems to both relieve the man and make him tense. "You are leaving already?"

There is a hint of amusement in those eyes now. It looks much more like the other face in her memory, one that has the same features, but not the same qualities. "If you are the new Spirit of the Tree, then there's someone who needs to speak with you and he's already been waylaid enough."

He leaves then, seeming like little more than a whisper of a memory in the world.

* * *

Origin comes to see her then. He is King, he explains, of Summon Spirits.

She looks up at him from her seat on some rubble, the whitewood staff smooth in her hands. She knows him from memories as well, for Martel Yggdrasill was also beloved of Origin. "You have come to explain my duties?"

He touches down beside her, a Spirit made of sunsets and quicksilver and the space between the stars. "No. I do not think I need to do that. The Spirit of the Tree has always been one unique to the others."

_(She felt his memories of the other Spirit of the Great Tree, the first Tree. A Spirit with eyes of bloodred and a smirk that curled across ever-changing lips and a voice that resonated through the air. The name echoed inside her, a familiar note, complimentary to hers…Ratatosk…)_

"You are different than he was." Origin tells her, his voice tinged with a sorrow that will never leave, much like the eyes of Lloyd and Kratos. "And different than the woman whose face you wear."

Someone whose memories she's made from gives her some kind of temper, some steel in her spine. "I am my own person." She says and Origin seems surprised to hear the hint of heat in her voice.

"Not yet, you are not. But one day, you will be." The way he says it makes the temper and steel dissipate. "I came to warn you of the danger of losing control of the memories."

She is made of memories and heart-wishes. It's what she is. She is not this Spirit before her, spidersilk fractures in blazing sunrises. She is lovepainhurtjoylaughter and sobbingcryingfearterrortears as well as angerrageconfusionexcitment . She is everything that makes up mortals and not one of them.

She does not know how to explain this, however, so she nods. Origin sits with her awhile, not saying a word, but staring at everywhere but her face_ (At the face of Martel Yggdrasill)_

* * *

He comes at dawn, a silent shadow. She knows his face immediately, as he must know hers.

_(She's _wrong._ She was too perfect. The skin is too new, too pale, too undamaged. If she was truly Martel, as Kratos had told him, then where was the thin scar bisecting the left eyebrow? Her ears tapered to an elegant point; weren't triangular like a half-elf's. Her eyes had too much green in them. The differences were enough to help him keep his feet, though the similarities were enough to let his old heart stop and skip beats)_

"Kratos told me of you." She says. She is beginning to develop her own memories, slowly enough. She likes the feeling.

"I'm sure he was very flattering." There is something off about his tone that she cannot place. It doesn't sound sincere and it isn't true because Kratos had said nothing of the sort. Something must show on her face because he adds, "I was being sarcastic."

Her eyes flick of their own accord to the fourth finger of his left hand where a ring made half of gold and half of steel rests. He follows her eyes and there isn't a reaction on his face.

"I know that object." She holds her own left hand out and, like heart-wish not fully developed, she can see it. She's not sure he can though. "It has writing on the inside."

"It does. Why are you here?" He is blunt, this man. His face is colder than Kratos', but his eyes are sadder.

"I am the Spirit of the Tree."

He steps closer to the seedling, crouching in front of it, stroking its leaves. The action flashes a memory in her mind_ (He was younger, hair shorter, eyes bright with happiness as he smiled at the woman in front of him as she talked animatedly about something as they picked herbs in the garden)_ and she asks, "Why are _you_ here?"

He doesn't reply for long heartbeats. "…I'm four thousand and twenty eight years old. I can't die because I promised someone I wouldn't die needlessly." It had begun as a good idea once, in a world at war, but Fate likes to play cruel jokes on her favorite subjects. "So here I am. Thought you'd like some help with the guarding of the Tree."

"I am told that this world needs rebuilding." She says slowly.

"It does."

"Why do you not help?"

The smile that tilts his lips is crooked and bitter. "I'm better at destroying things than I am at rebuilding."

The memories resonate clearer and the words of others—Lloyd, mostly. He was the one who minded the least about her appearance and her mannerisms—as they described to her why the world is the way it is. "I don't believe you."

"You don't have to. Beauty of a free world and so forth."

"You built up two worlds, an entire religion, a whole new history."

His eyes narrow ever so slightly, his shoulders tense and he shifts his weight—it's an automatic motion, one of an animal feeling cornered—and he tells her, "None of those were good things, believe me."

"Perhaps you simply channeled your abilities wrongly."

"You shouldn't talk about things that don't concern you." He turns on his heel and leaves, graceful as the predator he is.

* * *

Kratos comes to sit beside her a few more times. He is quiet—unlike his son who speaks of everything beneath the sun and is inquisitive about her—but he is good company. Not that she has much to compare it to. After a few hours, he seems to grow tired of sitting still—he and his son are more alike than they think—and he begins to clear the rubble. She decides to help after the third time this happens.

She enjoys the work with her hands. The seedling will need the room to grow anyway. When Lloyd saw what they had done—he and his father are never too close to each other for very long. She does not want to know what happened between them. She cares not for more memories that are not her own—he immediately began to bring plants and seeds to put down.

They are both surprisingly good with the plants and, one of the few times they are visiting at the same time, she comments on it. They both look up at her, vaguely surprised, with the same sad, red-tinted eyes.

Lloyd laughs, a free, sheepish sound that reverberates through the air and seems to be absorbed by the very ground. "My da—" He pauses, as though trying to figure out how to word it. She comprehends that the situation between he and his fathers is quite complicated. He seems to decide to ignore it because he continues as though it never happened. "My dad learned to love plants when he started living on the surface, so…I picked it up."

When she turns to Kratos and gives him a questioning look, he simply says, "I spent many years with Martel."

She understands that when Kratos and his friend—and that is a bit of a stretch by how they behave—Yuan say 'Martel' they don't mean her. They never address her with a name if they can help it. They mean the woman that she is haunted by memories of because the more that people remember her, the more they keep that woman in the memories and, by extension, the Summon Spirit with her face, alive. That woman had been brave, sweet, sassy, intelligent and compassionate and absolutely everything that she did not know how to be.

She wonders if what she feels is what Lloyd calls 'jealousy' and then decides that the idea is silly. Why be jealous of a memory of a woman who has been dead and gone for four millennia?

* * *

One day, Yuan returns. He looks around at the plants poking out of the dirt and his eyes settle on the seedling that grows ever so slowly. Kratos is there that day. He seems unsurprised to see Yuan.

"I thought you would have left already." Yuan says to him.

"So did I."

She is confused when they do not say more and yet seem to reach an understanding. She has never seen two people have a conversation without words before, but they seem to be able to.

They work on clearing more of the rubble. To watch the two seraphim work together is a strange thing; she can see shared heart-wishes strung between them—some fulfilled, some not—and those heart-wish strings sometimes pull taut and tense and other times, they would hang, loose and comfortable.

It is after they are done working for the day _(They seemed more familiar like this, with dirt streaking their skin and dust settled on their clothes. It was only because of her memories that weren't hers, she knew, but it they were nonetheless)_ and the sun is painting the world in gold and red as it sets, violet shadows stretching and darkening and after Kratos has already gone—she senses that she won't see him again—that Yuan settles on the ground.

"You're staying?" She asks.

"You need help with all this and it's not like I have somewhere to be." He doesn't look at her when he says this—it's a boyish remnant of the boy-man in the memories that aren't hers—but his fingers twist the ring on his left hand and she knows why he's here.

But even if he is here because of this shade of his wife, he is company and she likes company, not that it comes around very often. And, after about a week in his constant presence, she realizes that he is as good company as Kratos, if of a different sort. He is just as quiet sometimes, but his remarks are sharper, his voice changes in fluctuations depending on his mood—unlike Kratos, whose voice stayed the same, but his body language (Lloyd's friend Genis had taught her that) would shift.

The first time he makes her laugh, he whips his head around to stare at her. He hadn't been trying to be funny—sarcastic, he calls it. _(The sound was wrong wrong wrong. Martel the Spirit's laugh was otherworldly, a sound that trembles and vibrates between the space in the winds. Martel the woman's laugh had been silver bells and summer warmth. He decided he preferred knowing the differences rather than constantly seeing the similarities.)_

* * *

_"If a single tear fell from your eyes into the ocean  
And then washed up on some far and distant shore,  
I would still recognize that teardrop  
For in the end, that tear would still be yours."  
-Trans-Siberian Orchestra_


End file.
